SecureWorks Releases Trojan Fighter

ATLANTA — SecureWorks recently announced the availability of a tool designed to fight Torpig, one of the most widely used Trojans designed to steal financial information.The free tool, called Untorpig, can read logs of Trojan activity and reverse the encryption to allow incident response personnel to see what sensitive information the Trojan delivered to the attacker’s server.The SecureWorks research team obtained samples of the Torpig Trojan and reverse engineered the encryption algorithm. Torpig is used to change any information transmitted between a Web browser and a Web server in any HTTP session, even those encrypted by TLS/SSL. Torpig steals passwords, logs key strokes, tracks web browsing, and finds usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, Social Security numbers and other key personal information.“The Torpig Trojan is notorious for stealing financial data and is behind some of the most successful hacking schemes ever launched. Torpig is extremely sophisticated, down to encrypting the data it steals,” said Don Jackson, director of threat intelligence for SecureWorks.Untorpig will locate and test for valid encryption keys from various sources in the log data and change keys as necessary to decrypt all of the stolen information, will automatically handle Torpig HTTP traffic logs in various formats and can decrypt data in aggregate logs.“With Untorpig, incident responders will have an automated process for quickly decrypting the data it has stolen, thus allowing security professionals to implement protective measures in an expedient manner,” Jackson said.Untorpig is available for download from the security tools page under the research section of the SecureWorks Web site, www.secureworks.com/research/tools/untorpig.–[email protected]

NCUF Ike Relief Donations at $147,000

WASHINGTON — The National Credit Union Foundation said its Hurricane Ike relief donations, much of it routed through its online CUAid vehicle, topped $147,000, with 71 organizations making contributions from 24 states.The average donation was $2,070, according to a year-end report on the relief effort.In addition to organizational giving, there were 88 individual donations from 13 states totaling $6,990 “well above average for the disaster relief industry and a testament” to how CUs take care of their own.The NCUF report listed the top three CU donors as Keesler FCU in Biloxi, Miss., with $25,000; Merck Employees FCU in Rahway, N.J., with $10,000; and SchoolsFirst FCU in Santa Ana, Calif., at $10,000. The NCUF also regranted $25,000 of the proceeds from the America’s Credit Unions Congressional Invitational Golf Tournament to the disaster relief effort, said Steven Bosack, NCUF deputy director.The final tally from NCUF and CUAid was 159 donations totaling $154,637 with “100% of these donations now disbursed” to the affected employees, said Bosack.“On the strength of these donations and the outstanding work of state credit union foundations and leagues, hundreds of Gulf Coast credit union employees are now recovering from Hurricane Ike,” said BosackActing separately but in conjunction with NCUF, the Texas Credit Union Foundation solicited donations on its own in Texas raising $561,686 for disaster relief efforts.–[email protected]